Racial Quotas in Desegregation Case Rejected

A federal appeals panel has shot down a series of lower-court orders
that required the Rockford, Ill., schools to meet racial benchmarks in
everything from test scores to teaching assignments.

Offering further evidence of the federal judiciary's pullback
on court-imposed desegregation remedies, a panel of the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the 7th Circuit said the district could not be held
responsible for closing the achievement gap separating black and
Hispanic students from their white and Asian-American peers.

In a strongly worded ruling, the appeals court also threw out quotas
set by U.S. Magistrate Judge P. Michael Mahoney in the areas of student
discipline, teacher hiring and assignment, remedial education, and
cheerleading squads. And it denounced as "absurdly confining" the
racial-balance requirements that the judge had imposed to avoid
segregation within individual classes.

"Violations of law must be dealt with firmly, but not used to launch
the federal courts on ambitious schemes of social engineering," the
three-judge panel found. "Children, the most innocent of the innocent
persons occasionally brushed by Draconian decrees, should not be made
subjects of Utopian projects."

Desegregation activists denounced the decision.

"This is a nasty opinion that really creates an impossible set of
standards for justifying remedies to educational discrimination," said
Gary Orfield, a professor of education and social policy at Harvard
University.

Test-Score Order Assailed

In 1993, Judge Mahoney found that the 28,000-student district had
systematically discriminated against African-American and Latino
students, two groups that make up a third of its enrollment. Last year,
he issued a string of remedial orders, including a ruling last spring
in which he gave school officials four years to halve the test-score
disparity between white and minority students. ( "Judge Rules Ed. Practices Led To Segregation
in Ill. District," Nov. 10, 1993, and "Racial Quotas Are Ordered For Rockford,"
June 19, 1996.)

In that student-achievement mandate, the judge sought to comply with
the U.S. Supreme Court's 1995 decision in the Missouri v.
Jenkins case from Kansas City, Mo., that set stringent limits on
judges' use of test-score disparities as justification for
desegregation remedies. ("In K.C. Case,
Court Curtails Judges' Powers," June 21, 1995.)

Quotas Thrown Out

But the appeals court found that he had failed to do so, saying it
was unlikely that lower scores by blacks and Hispanics on standardized
tests stemmed from discrimination by school officials.

"Were there a feasible means, decreeable by a court, of closing the
gap in educational achievement between white and black students, the
gap would have been closed by now," the appeals panel wrote.

A state-by-state study by the Education Trust, a Washington-based
organization that is an advocate for poor and minority students, warned
last fall that progress toward closing the gap affecting blacks and
Hispanics had stalled, and in some cases reversed, since 1988. (
"Achievement Gap Widening, Study
Reports," Dec. 4, 1996.)

In its unanimous ruling April 15 in People Who Care v.
Rockford Board of Education, the Chicago-based 7th Circuit panel
also:

Overturned a ban on academic tracking imposed by Judge Mahoney.
It said judges and lawyers are incapable of resolving the controversy
over sorting students by ability. The court said the district can do
so as long as uses it objective, nonracist criteria.

Struck down the requirement that the percentage of blacks and
Hispanics in individual classes fall within 5 percent of their
proportion at that grade level in a school. Calling those limits "too
tight," the appellate panel sent back to Judge Mahoney the question
of how far they should be relaxed.

Found unconstitutional requirements that at least 13.5 percent of
the district's teachers be black or Hispanic, that each school's
faculty mirror that of the districtwide teaching force, and that
minority teachers gain "super-seniority" rights in a layoff.

Declared impermissible an order that black and Hispanic
enrollment in remedial programs mirror that in the district
overall.

Called racial quotas for cheerleaders "a barefaced denial of
equal protection" that "demeans the remedial process in school
desegregation litigation."

Schools Chief Ambivalent

Rockford Superintendent Ronald L. Epps voiced relief at some aspects
of the ruling, and said he was heartened that it left intact the
funding for educational programs aimed at boosting minority
achievement.

But the superintendent also expressed concern that the decision
would undermine progress in diversifying the district's teaching
force.

And he said it lent credence to the perception created by a series
of recent rulings that the federal courts no longer have "a serious
commitment to desegregation."

"It leaves the desegregation of the schools dependent on the good
faith of the school boards and communities," Mr. Epps said. "This is
going to be an issue this nation is going to have to come to terms
with: the isolation and segregation of students in our schools by
race."